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August 08, 2015

You Ready for Academic Blogging?

I know I haven't been blogging here very much lately, as I haven't paid my server fees and was denied access to do anything here for quite long time while I got some money into my American account. The thing is that TypePad didn't accept PayPal for quite a long time and since I don't keep up with such things, I'm not sure when that of the service but apparently they did. The Last time I have this problem around this time last year, it had to do with the fact that they didn't accept PayPal and I hardly actually put physical cash into my Bank of America account anymore. So I just waited until I had some reason to put actual cash into my American account to get the virtual boot taking off my blog. If I could go back in a time machine, I wouldn't be doing my blog on TypePad. But I'm grandfathered into this dumb service since I first started blogging back in, I believe, 2003, when it was a very different Inter web world. If I could do it all over again, I'd be on WordPress.com or something else, but not a custom WordPress install, Since the technical skills required to keep one's word press blog up and running without getting hacked or taken over by worm, what happens to my Feetmanseoul.com blog, is easily enough to make this hobby no longer fun.

But I've gotten a lot of benefit from having a blog and this particular one has gotten much Google love, Which is why I keep this one paid up with great reluctance about once a year. But this isn't to say I can't continue blogging on other platforms which come into existence in the meantime.

Since I'm happy to report–to those of you who aren't following me or friends with me on Facebook and already know this–that since I've finished my PhD, I can take my writing and research interests into purely academic directions. In the years since becoming a doctor of philosophy I've moved on to a tenure-track position in Pusan and am under pressure to publish or perish nowadays. My first two year contract at my new university requires that I basically publish one Academic article per semester in an international Journal, upon pain of not being rehired. Now, this is something I'm fully prepared to do and have been wranglin an academic paper together, but realize that if I ever want to be accepted in American academia, I'm going to need a book published at a top-tier academic press. Now, since I'm in South Korea and have been an avid and active photographer/documenter of society, I have been trying to turn this my apparent liability -- having spent the last 10 years pursuing photography and fashion and trying to use that to make commentaries on Korean society, which would seemingly be an esoteric pursuit, but academia is all about esoteric pursuits --so I've been hawking myself as a visual sociologist who is using Visual data to make sense of Korean society in a cultural studies context. I think I have an advantage here: back in 2002, who gave two craps about South Korea outside of the context of developmental studies or economics? Even though I find Korean history interesting on a personal level, the world has going on turning quite fine without caring about South Korean history. But nowadays, there are enough folks in the academic and publishing worlds who care about Korea's new cultural "Han River Miracle."

So I've finished my PhD dissertation and am in an academic position to put together an academic text that can breakdown Korean culture for the undergraduate minority of the masses taking classes in Asian studies or Asian area studies. And I think there is definitely a desire for this book that will break down Korea for professors teaching undergraduate courses that might come to cover Korean culture but who don't feel versed enough in Korean culture to really critically break things down for a motivated undergraduate who might be wanting to do a paper on "problematic gender representations in K pop" or something like that. And this is just this sort of thing that existing books on Korea can't really help an undergraduate with, since most of them tend to be in disciplines that put out Great history, economics, or a political science, and occasionally even anthropology books on Korea, but there aren't that many written from the cultural studies perspective that what arm an undergraduate with the critical, theoretical skills required to tackle their work in class, and every Asian American studies professor isn't going to be able to help such an undergraduate interested in tackling such a topic. In any case, I am planning to turn my dissertation into a more palatable Academic work that I've entitled Deconstructing Korea: A Cultural Studies Approach. And I harist some of the book proposal I'm preparing into a classy looking website I've prepared on the Squarespace platform, which integrates my social media Banks or photography with the ability to do Academic blogging, All with the goal of building a community of people, small as it might be, around a desire to critically deconstruct and take apart Korean culture. So I've finally turned my desire to blog and get feedback on my thinking into the purely academic direction that would have been useful to help me get my doctoral dissertation finished well before 2014. But that's water under the bridge. It's 2015 and I have my doctorate in hand and the ability to turn a 300 page, finished, yet esoteric manuscript into an actual book people might want to read. And when that comes out, I invite all of you dear readers to put some cash in my pocket and buy my book. Until then, however, I invite you to continue the ongoing conversation we've had on this blog on the new deconstructing Korea, which smartly integrates my photography on social media and the blogging.

Comments

You Ready for Academic Blogging?

I know I haven't been blogging here very much lately, as I haven't paid my server fees and was denied access to do anything here for quite long time while I got some money into my American account. The thing is that TypePad didn't accept PayPal for quite a long time and since I don't keep up with such things, I'm not sure when that of the service but apparently they did. The Last time I have this problem around this time last year, it had to do with the fact that they didn't accept PayPal and I hardly actually put physical cash into my Bank of America account anymore. So I just waited until I had some reason to put actual cash into my American account to get the virtual boot taking off my blog. If I could go back in a time machine, I wouldn't be doing my blog on TypePad. But I'm grandfathered into this dumb service since I first started blogging back in, I believe, 2003, when it was a very different Inter web world. If I could do it all over again, I'd be on WordPress.com or something else, but not a custom WordPress install, Since the technical skills required to keep one's word press blog up and running without getting hacked or taken over by worm, what happens to my Feetmanseoul.com blog, is easily enough to make this hobby no longer fun.

But I've gotten a lot of benefit from having a blog and this particular one has gotten much Google love, Which is why I keep this one paid up with great reluctance about once a year. But this isn't to say I can't continue blogging on other platforms which come into existence in the meantime.

Since I'm happy to report–to those of you who aren't following me or friends with me on Facebook and already know this–that since I've finished my PhD, I can take my writing and research interests into purely academic directions. In the years since becoming a doctor of philosophy I've moved on to a tenure-track position in Pusan and am under pressure to publish or perish nowadays. My first two year contract at my new university requires that I basically publish one Academic article per semester in an international Journal, upon pain of not being rehired. Now, this is something I'm fully prepared to do and have been wranglin an academic paper together, but realize that if I ever want to be accepted in American academia, I'm going to need a book published at a top-tier academic press. Now, since I'm in South Korea and have been an avid and active photographer/documenter of society, I have been trying to turn this my apparent liability -- having spent the last 10 years pursuing photography and fashion and trying to use that to make commentaries on Korean society, which would seemingly be an esoteric pursuit, but academia is all about esoteric pursuits --so I've been hawking myself as a visual sociologist who is using Visual data to make sense of Korean society in a cultural studies context. I think I have an advantage here: back in 2002, who gave two craps about South Korea outside of the context of developmental studies or economics? Even though I find Korean history interesting on a personal level, the world has going on turning quite fine without caring about South Korean history. But nowadays, there are enough folks in the academic and publishing worlds who care about Korea's new cultural "Han River Miracle."

So I've finished my PhD dissertation and am in an academic position to put together an academic text that can breakdown Korean culture for the undergraduate minority of the masses taking classes in Asian studies or Asian area studies. And I think there is definitely a desire for this book that will break down Korea for professors teaching undergraduate courses that might come to cover Korean culture but who don't feel versed enough in Korean culture to really critically break things down for a motivated undergraduate who might be wanting to do a paper on "problematic gender representations in K pop" or something like that. And this is just this sort of thing that existing books on Korea can't really help an undergraduate with, since most of them tend to be in disciplines that put out Great history, economics, or a political science, and occasionally even anthropology books on Korea, but there aren't that many written from the cultural studies perspective that what arm an undergraduate with the critical, theoretical skills required to tackle their work in class, and every Asian American studies professor isn't going to be able to help such an undergraduate interested in tackling such a topic. In any case, I am planning to turn my dissertation into a more palatable Academic work that I've entitled Deconstructing Korea: A Cultural Studies Approach. And I harist some of the book proposal I'm preparing into a classy looking website I've prepared on the Squarespace platform, which integrates my social media Banks or photography with the ability to do Academic blogging, All with the goal of building a community of people, small as it might be, around a desire to critically deconstruct and take apart Korean culture. So I've finally turned my desire to blog and get feedback on my thinking into the purely academic direction that would have been useful to help me get my doctoral dissertation finished well before 2014. But that's water under the bridge. It's 2015 and I have my doctorate in hand and the ability to turn a 300 page, finished, yet esoteric manuscript into an actual book people might want to read. And when that comes out, I invite all of you dear readers to put some cash in my pocket and buy my book. Until then, however, I invite you to continue the ongoing conversation we've had on this blog on the new deconstructing Korea, which smartly integrates my photography on social media and the blogging.

"Why Be Critical?"

Before you say this site is "anti-Korean" or bashing Korea – read this: "Why Be Critical?" Chances are, if you're simply angry because I am a social critic in Korea but not actually Korean, see if your argument isn't just a kneejerk response that follows these patterns.

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Photo Classes!

Session 1: Just the Basics
Dealing with the basic operations and functions of your DSLR, explaining each function, button, and doo-hickey. The bulk of the session is likely going to stick around the relationship between aperture and shutter, as well as depth-of-field. Basically everything on your camera has something to do with this relationship.

Session 2: Composition and Shooting (Shooting Session 1)
We'll take those examples and look at them on the big screen, while also answering the concrete questions that will pop up about the stuff we learned before. Then we'll talk about composition and other framing issues, including lens lengths and why some lenses are worth $100 bucks and some are worth $10,000.

Session 3: Flashes and Advanced Exposure (Shooting Session 2)
Dealing with flash, in terms of compensating above and below exposure levels (bracketing), as well as other bracketing techniques in general.

Session 4: Final Session/Critiques
Keeping it open, determined by the class.

Four 3-hour sessions, as well as shooting sessions, photo discussions, and critiques. An individual photo essay will also be done as part of the ongoing class assignments. Inquire at the email address at the top right of this page.

As for my photo book (now in limbo due to editorial differences with the publisher), you can see the representative chapters from the "Seoul Essays" posts below. Note that Chapter 3 remains undone and in limbo on my computer: